After the Oslo Massacre, an Assault on Free Speech

Last July 22, a powerful explosion rocked a government building in downtown Oslo, killing eight people. Later that day, 69 people, mostly teenagers, were shot to death by a lone gunman at a Labor Party camp on the nearby island of Utøya. By nightfall, police had a suspect in custody: a 32-year-old Norwegian named Anders Behring Breivik, who had apparently carried out both attacks on his own.

Contrary to nearly everyone's original assumption that Islamic terrorists were behind the Oslo attack, a 1,500-page "manifesto" by Breivik showed that he opposed the mass immigration of Muslims into Norway and had targeted the Labor Party gathering because of the party's role in shaping the country's multicultural immigration policy.

As an American who had lived in Oslo since 1999, I was deeply distressed by the atrocities of July 22. But when I learned that they were the work of a native Norwegian who claimed to have acted in opposition to Norwegian multiculturalism, I was even more devastated. For I saw at once what this would mean.